Mists of Pandaria: Challenge Mode Dungeons
We will hear more about Mists of Pandaria in the upcoming weeks, but while we are waiting for new announcements we can review the new Challenge Mode dungeons that are coming in Mists of Pandaria.

Heroic mode dungeons will not be as difficult as they were in Cataclysm, instead they will be similar to the Wrath of the Lich King level difficulty.

Challenge Mode dungeons will require you to complete a dungeon in a certain amount of time to win a medal and other rewards, similar to the Zul'Aman timed run for the bear mount.

There are Bronze, Silver, Gold medals that will be earned based on the amount of time taken to complete the dungeon.

You gear levels are normalized by reducing your overall item level to a set level so that everyone is on equal gear footing.

There will be no way to get better gear and just overpower the challenge.

Completing the Challenge on gold will incur a stacking debuff on future attempts: it’ll start with a 5% debuff, but if you manage to finish with a gold medal time on that run you’ll receive a 10% debuff on your next run, and so on.

The challenges will reward unique gear for transmogrification and valor points.

Other possible rewards include pets, mounts, titles, and achievements depending on your score.

A new challenge dungeons UI will be added, allowing you to check your medals, ranking, show what rewards you can unlock, and more.

There will be realm wide leaderboards that allow you to compete with your friends, guild, or everyone!

Challenge Mode will work only on Pandaria dungeons at the beginning.

Challenge Mode dungeons will use the Dungeon Finder tool.

It is possible that the system could be expanded to raids in the future.

Class Transmogrification List
With the popularity of our previous weapon transmogrification list, we have expanded the list to more slots for each class. Because these lists are so long and take some time to prepare, the lists will be split into groups of a few classes at a time. Today we finish with Shaman and Hunters. If you would like to see other transmogrification data, let us know in the comments.

This time around items that share the same model and color are counted together in the rankings as often as possible, but not items that have different color variations of the same model.

All of the items in the list have screenshots on the database page if you are looking for some transmogrification ideas!

I know, for "some people" original Cataclysm heroic dungeons were too hard, I'm fine with that. But nowadays, difficulty is already REALLY easy, while being harder than WotLK's difficulty. I can't remember any point in time when dungeons have been as boring as during WotLK, and I'm quite disappointed that Blizzard chose to go back to that kind of design.

I'm sure I'll love the challenge mode, but considering "regular" normal and heroics WILL be part of progression (everyone will HAVE TO go through it), it's a pity many people will have to "suffer" completely dumbed down dungeons :/

Completing the Challenge on gold will incur a stacking debuff on future attempts: it’ll start with a 5% debuff, but if you manage to finish with a gold medal time on that run you’ll receive a 10% debuff on your next run, and so on.

What? like. if you complete it on gold, it makes it harder to complete it again? or... yeah... like this makes no sense

WOTLK dungeon challenges? You mean when you could simply run into whatever trash packs with no CC needed at all and simply AoE everything? And then pull and oneshot bosses without really having no idea for strategy or abilities? No thanks.

What? like. if you complete it on gold, it makes it harder to complete it again? or... yeah... like this makes no sense

I see it like the 0-5-10-15% buff in ICC..
It's a really easy way to say "Hey, you have challenging content here ! Just do the same dungeon 5 times in a row an have a cumulative debuff which will make everything harder !". Funny the first time, eventually, then you get bored :/

What? like. if you complete it on gold, it makes it harder to complete it again? or... yeah... like this makes no sense

And I wonder why WoW is going down hill...

How hard is it to grasp really?

You beat it on gold level, then you get a debuff, that stacks, to make it harder, so that you got something to actually beat as well, sure eventually people will hit a cap, but yeah.

The stacking debuff is there to raise the bar even further, above the 3 standard medal levels, its not exactly rocket science to piece it together.

And tbh, things like this change to dungeons and talents and what not, might be the only thing making me return to WoW, im sick of getting demands just to progress, I mean, sure, you need to be able to complete it, but people dont want to complete content, they want to freaking zergrush through it, something you cant do if you arent geared, so for new players, guess what, they still exist, there is nothing they can do. However, with the lowering of the difficulty bar, people might stop kicking people from heroics and instead just let the poor people get that shiny new piece of gear and points that actually means progression to them.

The stupidity in the MMO community of late is staggering, reading comprehension is all but tossed out the window, isnt it?

And no, Im not a native speaker, so I bet there are tons of grammatical errors in my text, before anyone cares to point that bit of obvious info out.

Heroic mode dungeons will not be as difficult as they were in Cataclysm, instead they will be similar to the Wrath of the Lich King level difficulty.Challenge Mode dungeons will require you to complete a dungeon in a certain amount of time to win a medal and other rewards, similar to the Zul'Aman timed run for the bear mount.

The heroics in early Cata were some of the best PvE experiences I've had in this game. They were challenging, required brains/CC and you could take your time with each pull (which was necessary because healers usually lost 50-75% mana on each pull). The only groups that wiped on them were the groups with zero communication, or groups where one idiot jeopardized everything.Now we'll be stuck with faceroll heroics and timed runs with idiots yelling "TANK! PULL! GOGO!" every 5 seconds. What a bummer.It's a damn shame that they gave in to the whiners.

Still laughing, funny how fast game design and integrity goes out the window when you lose some, heck possibly unrelated, subscriptions.

LOVE This part, btw:

"The Lich King Heroic dungeons (and Naxxramas) were too easy to zerg, setting up an expansion-long expectation that purple gear would come easy and often. In retrospect, that was a mistake. We don't at all view the Cataclysm dungeon and raid balance as a mistake."

I was thinking this too, you could skip all the trash and get right to the bosses

I actually really like some of the ideas here. I don't get how people don't understand them. The stacking debuff could be cool too, just to see how far you can actually push yourself.

The only thing I'm not sure about is the leader board. If it was Guilds rated or Dungeon Teams then maybe, but as they're encouraging people to use the LFG tool to do this, won't your score always only be as good as the lowest common denominator you're randomly grouped with?

I think they need to start Dungeon Teams, just the same as arena teams, but with a realm wide scoreboard

Cool, but I was hoping the Challenge Mode stuff would be different than just being timed. Like, harder bosses, multiple bosses at once, creative additional abilities on bosses, smaller/larger battlefields, extra range on enemy attacks, etc.

[...]But as they're encouraging people to use the LFG tool to do this, won't your score always only be as good as the lowest common denominator you're randomly grouped with?

Unless the LFG tool will be updated to allow queueing specifically for timed runs, we will likely be stuck with the everyday-sunday-drivers in LFG groups who can't be arsed. I'm pretty sure one can still queue for LFG with a team of 5 realm-only people too though? They couldn't possibly expect us to attempt serious timed runs with LFG only groups.

Originally Posted by MrExcelion

I hope they're considering this ahead of time.

They could fix it easily enough by linking the intended pack pulls to the nearest boss, but if the first list of gold medal runs consists only of rogues and druids we know what happened. :P